In his book Homo Ludens from 1936, Johan Huizinga describes play as an independent cultural form, which cannot be reduced to other forms. The first part of the book explores the possibility of seeing play as an aspect of other forms. ‘The more we try to mark off the form we call “play” from other forms apparently related to it, the more the absolute independence of the play-concept stands out’ (Huizinga, 1971: 6). Play, says Huizinga, is characterized as being fundamentally superfluous (Huizinga, 1971: 8). By this he means precisely that the meaning of play derives from play itself. It is not a function of another form. It is not a task.
While Huizinga observes play as cultural form, Bateson observes play as a distinctive form of communication, which always involves meta-communication about whether or not play is taking place. Bateson explores the specific difference that is being drawn when play communicates the fact that ‘this is play’. He suggests that play is the unity of the difference between ‘These actions in which we now engage do not denote what those actions for which they stand would denote’ (Bateson, 2000: 180) and ‘these actions in which we now engage, denote what these actions denote’. When children play-fight, for example, they draw a continual distinction between play-fighting and actual fighting by letting the feigned strike signify the strike of actual fighting but not signify that which an actual strike would signify in a real fist fight. The form of play can be formalized in this way:
Figure 5: The form of play.
These actions in which we now engage do not denote what those actions for which they stand would denote
These actions in which we now engage, denote what these actions denote
Play This is play
© 2011 ephemera 11(4): 406-432 Who is Yum-Yum?
articles Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen
The outside of the distinction represents that with which you can play but which play cannot be. The outside is, perceived from within play, the reality in which the representational figures of language apply and in which signs and actions mean what they say. Someone who puts out fires is a fireman and does not merely play that he is. Play toys with the outside of representational figures but has to remain on the inside where representation, sign, and actions, always assume a ‘as if’ quality. It is play with signs, representations, and actions through signs, representations, and actions, which point in the game to the meaning of these in ‘real life’ without possessing that meaning in the game.
Play doubles the world into the world of play and a ‘real’ world, and the doubling takes place on the side of the play. Dirk Baecker formulates it in this way:
In play, socialness is constituted by ways of reflection onto itself as the other side of itself. In play, socialness is experienced as what it is, namely as contingent, roughly meaning that it is neither necessary nor impossible, or again, given yet changeable. Play in general reveals the form of the social by which the play infects the world. (Baecker 1999: 103)
Thus, play represents a communicative socialness characterized by its doubling of this socialness so that the contingency of the social reality becomes visible in play. This doubling of the world in a fantasy world and a real world on the fantasy side of the distinction applies to the playing subject as well. As playing subject, you must be prepared to play along, and playing along also means doubling yourself into the playing self and the self outside of the game. As a player, you have to be prepared not only to observe the contingency of the world but to see yourself as contingent. The ‘playing self’ puts ‘the real self’ in parenthesis and that makes it possible to freely act out different roles in play without being held responsible at the end of the game. You are able to play with your self and thus see the contingency of the manifestation of the self.
The relationship between form and medium in the ‘Healthy
through Play’ campaign
I have shown the way in which the ‘Healthy through Play’ campaign observes play as a medium for its communications effort. The question remains whether and how play lets itself be formed within the specific forms established by the campaign, particularly the agreement pages discussed earlier. Since my material is campaign material rather than specific interactions between health professionals and at-risk families, the foci of my analysis are the conditions for possible relations between form and medium.
Here, the first thing that strikes me is the campaign’s third-order character; a state-run campaign designed for health professionals to campaign to at-risk families, who are meant to campaign to themselves. This means that the ‘Healthy through Play’ campaign can only link its elements to the extent that they maintain a certain level of plasticity in relation to further formation in the first and second order. Because of its third-order status, the state-run campaign can only shape its material to the extent that the formation process can be continued in varied form, first by the health professionals in relation to the families and subsequently by the families in relation to themselves. For example, agreements in ‘Healthy through play’ are clearly created as a medium, which
is supposed to carry the campaign message about health-promotion into the families. However, what qualifies the agreements as medium from the perspective of the campaign is that they still function as medium in the health professionals’ encounter with the at-risk families. So the National Board of Health forms the medium of agreements through the formation of standardized agreement pages, which open up for further manifestations in the relationship between health professionals and families. The element ‘agreement’, in other words, is variable and adaptable to different conditions of interaction between health professional and family.
Moreover, the campaign leaves open the choice of communication medium. This is the case in ‘Spin-the-bottle’ which oscillates between play and pedagogy depending on which field the bottle point to. But it is particularly obvious in the case of the agreement pages. The agreement pages could function as the form for the communication between health professionals and family in relation to rather different media. It could be the medium of power with the form superior (regulator)/inferior (regulated) where the family is defined as the regulated inferior and the professionals as the regulating superiors. In this case, communication is about how health professionals use the agreement pages to regulate the family with regard to its self-regulation according to the health advice. Here, the agreement pages are perceived as a regulatory tool for health professionals as well as for the family. It could be the medium of contract with the form obligation/freedom. In this case, communication would be about making an agreement between health professionals and the family about the family’s self-agreement to transform the health advice into contractual obligations. The agreement page then takes on the quality of standardized agreements, which can be further specified. Moreover, it could be the medium of pedagogy with the form better/worse in terms of learning where the family is conceived as a moldable child who needs to learn about health and where the professionals are seen as instructive health pedagogues. Here, the agreement page becomes a pedagogical illustrative tool. Finally, it could be the medium of play with the form play/ ‘reality’. The health professionals and the family are then seen as playmates, and the agreement page attains the quality of a game that provides a variety of possibilities for play. In this communication, nothing is what it pretends to be. The health professionals are not simply counselors but invite the families to play through fun and voluntary offers. The health advice is precisely given by Yum-Yum, and while it is good advice it is also fun. Agreements do not represent tedious responsibilities but an agreement game where we fulfill the terms of the agreement in a playful spirit as long as it remains fun. The communication effort of the campaign here relates to a heterogeneity of different alternative media whose choices are not given. It is a campaign that withholds its choice of medium until a recursive attributing of the communication that actually happens around the agreement pages.
It is, however, more complex than this since the campaign does not simply reintroduce the distinction between form and medium so that the choice of medium is ‘decentralized’ and placed in the specific interactions between professional and family. The campaign’s recursive attribution of the medium for communication does not in fact have to confirm the communication’s actual formation of a medium. The campaign is constructed in such a way so that the health professionals can always respond to opposition from families by saying that something else is going on than what the families are saying. A health professional can suggest regulation by using the agreement
© 2011 ephemera 11(4): 406-432 Who is Yum-Yum?
articles Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen
pages, and if the family then opposes regulation, he or she is able to argue that they merely represent a voluntary agreement, which the family is invited to make with itself. The communication implies that the agreements constitute voluntary surrender of freedom. And if the family feels that the agreements are too unpleasant, the agreements are really just a play-agreement where it is important to remember that children often find such games fun. A scene for interaction is constructed, therefore, which allows for a constant oscillation among heterogeneous forms of communication. The contract sheets make up a machine of displacement in relation to communicative expectations. The result is that at-risk families never fully know whether they are partaking in play, regulation, negotiation of an agreement, or pedagogically organized learning processes, and each form implies a different selection of expectations, which cannot all be met at the same time. And it is a point in the campaign that seriousness whether defined within the form of agreement, pedagogy, or regulation momentarily turns into play with seriousness. It becomes impossible for the participants to determine whether they are dealing with a moment of seriousness or responsibility or play, particularly because the next moment might be one of reversal. The point is therefore not, that the agreement sheets are just play. The point is that the sheets are designed in such a way that is not possible to determine in advance how they structure expectations. With the help of the agreement sheets the health professionals can always deny what they are doing, retreating to play. The campaign makers have creating particular opportunities to get around emerging resistance by the citizens (where the alternative would have been to meet the resistance and recognizing citizen as legitimate opponent).
And it is important to pay attention to what it also means to refer to something as play. When play itself says ‘it is play’, it doubles the world and defines ‘reality’ as that with which we can play. Thus we must assume that the autopoiesis of play defines the campaign as its outside, that is, as what is played. The result is that we all act as we normally do in campaigns, but these actions do not mean what they normally would in a regular campaign. Play as a medium creates the rather peculiar situation that play is in fact only possible when it resists its external manifestation. If the campaign was successful at instrumentally designing play in a way so that it becomes the unambiguous carrier of the campaign message, it is no longer play but power parasiting on power. This means that the campaign looses the sense of voluntariness and dedication, which initially was the reason that the campaign chose play as medium. However, if the campaign is successful at allowing play to be constitutive and recruit participants to its activities, then the campaign message has been turned into something that play plays with and that it can place in parenthesis.
All this seems to point to the fact that the ‘Healthy through Play’ campaign struggles to select play as its medium without violently affecting the very form of the campaign. This is a campaign that does not want to be recognized as campaign, regulation that does not want to be seen as regulation, contracts that do not care for obligations but only freedom, and a pedagogy that seek not to be instructive. The ‘Healthy through Play’ campaign wants neither to be recognized as campaign not to be rejected as such. Perhaps the most probable result is that the campaign itself becomes a game. It is play- campaigning with the benefit of being able to quickly and easily suspend the campaign’s quality of regulation, pedagogy, and obligation if it senses opposition from citizens. However, this causes play to be the dominant form, which places the campaign
in parenthesis as something we are merely playing! The relationship between campaign as form and play as medium is deformed or even becomes reversible so that what used to be form (the campaign) suddenly becomes the medium of play. And this happens while the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries and the National Board of Health continue to play that they are running campaigns.